The illness of common mention is that men feel the need to complete the many things that they perceive life to have left unfinished.
If you are of ordinary mind you suffer the affliction of thinking that and it is your, and 
other right-thinking-people’s responsibility 
to add the needed, finishing touches to life.
 …which however, 
no one seems able to conclusively do.

This urge in man produces, “Progress”;
it also results in confusion:
both are natural to man,
but one is escapable by a few.
 
 

Amongst civilized humanity,
acceptance of current conditions is seen as 
a certain sign of a man’s backward state;
complacency is continually condemned 
as the mentally refined endlessly fret over 
the ever-lurking specter of the status quo.

Throughout the physical world it is indeed those 
the least educated, culturally sophisticated, and technically advanced who most display a 
laissez-faire attitude about their lives.
An urbanite worries about the look of his lawn, 
while a jungle dwelling hunter accepts whatever be the natural conditions surrounding his hut. 
City sophisticates strive mightily to, “get ahead,”
while rural bucolics are satisfied, sitting on a stump, 
with no place to go.
The intellectually oriented -- the engine of progress -- 
are ceaselessly concerned about, 
“world affairs & the future of humanity” 
while the rest of the world finds it to be just so much,
"Ho hum.” 
 

This is how things are, and apparently how they should be, (seeing as how this IS how they are),
with each group playing their appropriate,
inescapable, collective part,
but at the individual level this matter can be 
seen differently.
The common mood of one’s community will instantly prevail regardless of one individual’s 
dissenting sentiments;
if the collective voice of your physical environment declares that such-&-such thing should be changed in this-or-that manner,
your ideas to the contrary are worthless.
Men’s minds are programmed to find life unfinished;
first in the physical realm --  then the intellectual one.
    ”Life left the weather too hot here,
     so us humans had to develop &  provide 
     air conditioning to make it comfortably inhabitable,”
       (stage one).
    “Life failed to inform some men that 
      conservatism is the proper political program;
      thus we who realize it must so instruct others,”
       (second stage).
And the examples are as numerous as the things that interest humans that do not come out of the ground,
(the arts, science, morality, chauvinism, 
social position, prestige, religion, reputation, on & on).
 
 
 

The ordinary men & women who make mortal life run,
all feel that life left much of life unfinished --
--  especially as concerns the conditions of their life,
and the state of their temperament.

To be normal you must be dissatisfied with the circumstances of your life,
and to not be, identifies you as retrograde,
and relegates you to the, 
”you-just-don’t-understand-the-problem” pile;
while to be sane you must be dissatisfied with your self,
and any who would profess not to be, 
are suspected of insanity.

By the time a child’s consciousness has made him
verbally facile,
he has an awareness of being in an 
eternally-unfinished-world;
he feels a relentless pressure to step in, 
and help complete the job,
and while there is no shortage of opinions as to 
how this can be accomplished –
no efforts arising there from ever gets the job done.

THAT is the nature  AND purpose OF the feeling, (to wit):
                 THE FAILURE TO SUCCEED.
 
 

Few are the minds that life ever lets leave the factory 
that can comprehend this;
what men are normally supposed to do is 
unceasingly struggle-to, and speak-of the need to
complete the many areas in human existence wherein
things are obviously unfinished:
  ”And if man does not do it  --  who will?!”
But the real question for the one in a million individual is:
”Will it be noticed if I quit running fool’s errands?” 
 
 

     The finishing-touch to a woke-up man's life is that:
         he finally realizes that   -- he IS finished.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

“Ladies & gentlemen, that was our last song for the night. Me & miles, monk & max, (with basho sittin' in on bass),
have really enjoyed playing for you. 
Drive home safe, and we'll see you agin real soon. 
Good night,” 
                     and --  BAM!  --   it was all over --
                           -- finished.
 

                                             J